111: What I’m Outsourcing in 2024

Welcome to the shoot it straight podcast. I’m your host, Sabrina Gebhardt. Here, I will share an honest take on what it’s like to be a female creative entrepreneur while balancing business, motherhood, and life. Myself, along with my guests will get vulnerable through honest conversations and relatable stories because we’re willing to go there.

If you’re trying to find balance in this exciting place you’re in, yet willing to talk about the hard stuff too, The shoot it straight podcast is here to share practical and tangible takeaways to help you shoot it straight.

Welcome back to the shoot it straight podcast, my friends. So back in the summer in episode 97, I shared a few additions to my outsourcing lineup for this year. I shared a few that like I added to my team that I’m really, really obsessed with. And I got so many DMs on Instagram, so many responses. And you guys loved hearing how I invest my money and how I’ve grown my team and my business and loved hearing that I don’t do it all myself.

So I thought it would be fun if I took it a step further and I share. The whole lineup, like every single thing that I outsource in my business and in my life these days. I think it’s really important that you realize that I was once a do it all myself kind of girly. Okay. I totally did all the tasks, wore all the hats, tried to do everything, didn’t want to spend my money on outsourcing.

I was that person. But my business bestie, Coley James, likes to say that once you start outsourcing one thing, you realize how incredibly freeing it is. And that is totally my story as well. I started outsourcing very slowly about 10 years ago and I am to the point now where I outsource almost everything.

My team is quite large, so none of the people on my team are full time. They are all on a part time basis. They have hourly, I have hourly packages with them every month. Different people work different amounts of hours based on my needs, but it has been such a game changer to slowly but surely offload tasks that I don’t need to be doing tasks that somebody else can do for me faster and better.

Right. The whole thinking behind, I’m the only one that can do this thing. It’s my business. I have to do the things. No one can do it as good as me. Nobody knows what I want. That is all really a big fat lie, truly. And again, I used to be the person. That did everything myself. So if you’re still in that position, if you are still doing all the things and you’re thinking, yeah, that sounds really nice, Sabrina, I’d love to be able to outsource, but like, I can’t, I get it.

I was, I was in your shoes once too. I, again, I was scared to spend money. I was scared to bring on a team member. I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to, to afford them month to month. Right. I was afraid that they weren’t going to do things well, that they weren’t going to do things the way I wanted to, that bringing on another team member was going to somehow hurt my business or my business image or the final product that I was delivering.

And honestly, it’s just, again, it’s just not true. It’s not true. And the best advice I can tell you is to pick something, one thing. You’re going to hear this list of people that I have on my team, things that I outsource, and you’re going to think, uh, that’s like so much, and I’m going to break it down for you.

And I don’t think you should jump straight into this. Okay. Again, I’ve been outsourcing now for 10 years. I have added people year over year. I’ve grown my team as my needs and my business have shifted, but pick one thing, pick one thing so that you can force yourself. Out of your current comfort zone, you can push yourself into fear, even though you’re afraid to spend money, even though you’re afraid to hand over tasks, even though you’re afraid of what it’s going to do to your business, just do it anyways.

That is the only way that you are going to learn what it’s like to have support, what it’s like to not have to wear all the hats, what it’s like to let someone help you and take some of the load off. Okay. The only way you’re going to learn. And until you do that in fear, it is scary until you do that.

You are going to continue to be overworked, stressed out, overwhelmed, and quite frankly, at capacity, which we’re going to talk about a little bit later. So. Let’s dive in. I’m literally going to go down the list of the people that I have supporting me in my business and what that looks like and what that has looked like and why I added them and whatnot.

And the other thing I want to say kind of, uh, the caveat here is that remember I am not only an active photographer, I am also wearing all of these education hats. I have a podcast. I have quite a few irons in the fire with education offerings. Okay. And then I also have my photography business. So this is, these are people that I’m outsourcing for both sides of my job.

So let’s dive in. One of the first things that I outsourced a long time ago was my bookkeeping. It was re that was a really easy thing to hand off because I knew that I wasn’t good at it. Right. I love spreadsheets. I’m, I’m a nerd when it comes to spreadsheets. Part of that is my past career. Okay. I did a lot of spreadsheeting in my past career.

And so I love to look at numbers. I love to analyze. Okay. So keeping track of my numbers was not where I struggled. I struggled with the figuring out what I owed and so on. sales tax every month and putting together our taxes at the end of the year. That was the stuff that I was like, you know what? I don’t want to fumble through this anymore.

I’m just going to outsource all of it. And so about 10 years ago, I found a local, uh, bookkeeper. And I found this gentleman through another photographer friend. I had reached out and I was like, who are we using for bookkeeping? Cause like, I’ve never hired anybody to do this. So I don’t even know what to look at.

And she actually had somebody local. And I was like, that’s great. I was able to meet with him in person, ask him my questions. I was okay with sounding naive. You know, I was very upfront about like, I’m new to this. I don’t, I don’t even know what I need. I don’t know what I should be doing. And he was great.

And I had him for about eight years and then he retired and you know, as hard as it is to change service providers, it was actually a really beautiful thing. So you may have heard me talk about Kelly Marshall on the podcast before I’ve been working with her for a couple of years now. And I originally hired Kelly as a.

Money coach as a money mindset coach, we would have a monthly call and she would kind of help me work through some like mindset blocks and talk through things about, you know, pricing and offers and selling and money stories that I was telling myself. And it was, that was such a solid investment. I absolutely love working with Kelly, but I kind of felt a little bit torn because she was not my bookkeeper.

So she didn’t have her hands in the nitty gritty of my numbers and my business. Right. And so she was helping me with things, but only things that I like brought to the call, right? Like that I knew I was struggling with. So when my old bookkeeper retired, naturally I was like, okay, I wonder if I can just hire Kelly and like, do this with her.

And so that’s what I ended up doing. I switched from just doing money mindset coaching with her to now she is a money mindset coach. And my bookkeeper. Okay. So we still have a monthly call, but now what that looks like is she has run my numbers. She has sent me updated reports. She sends me a loom recording of what’s happening in my business and a snapshot.

And then we take that to a call and we talk through some problems, some things we’re seeing, we talk through wins. And then we also do like the money mindset coaching piece. Okay. And it has been so. Amazing. So amazing. I will have a link to her in the show notes because if I have sent so many of my coaching students to her, she is a gem.

If you need a bookkeeper, I highly recommend her hiring a bookkeeper. Adding a bookkeeper to your team is a really, really easy first step. And I will tell you, it’s not as expensive as you think it is. Not to mention the peace of mind of knowing that your numbers going into taxes are correct. Invaluable in my mind, right?

Knowing that I am exactly where I’m supposed to be. Also knowing that I am setting enough money aside to pay myself, setting enough money aside for taxes, for growth, for all of those things is just absolutely invaluable. So hiring a bookkeeper. Um, the next thing that I did was hire an assistant, okay? And this is for the photography side of my business, right?

I got to a point where I knew that I was overwhelmed with the photos in my business. This was back when I hired an assistant. This was before I was in education. I was literally only a photographer. Okay. But I had so many clients and so many inquiries coming in so many tasks that I just didn’t like doing right.

The invoicing, the contracting, the emailing, all of that. Not to mention there were days where I was having mini session events where I was like, man, it’d be really nice to have an extra set of hands here. Right. So I decided to hire an I obviously I found somebody local because I wanted to have this person available to me for events when I needed, but really the majority of the position was remote.

We met a couple times a year to get things established, um, to kind of touch base on things, but really it was just an email relationship, okay? So that was really, really awesome because I was able to hand off the tasks that I was constantly putting off, right? Like I was constantly putting off the admin side of photography because I enjoyed the photographing, the editing of the sneak peeks, the actually engaging with my clients.

I enjoyed the marketing part. I always put off the admin. And so finding somebody to do that for me was super helpful. Huge was absolutely huge. And then again, like I said, having them be able to come with me to many session events to help check clients in, to be a touch point, if they were running late and they needed to text somebody, it took the pressure off, right?

I was able to just focus on the families that I was photographing at the time. So that was really great. And the relationship that, uh, my assistant and I have, which now I’m onto my second assistant, uh, one of them moved on to bigger and better things. And then I have one, it is such a fine tuned business at this, our relationship at this point, honestly, it is a couple of hours a month.

So it is a very low cap, low cost experience. There are some months that it’s more than that. When I have many sessions or I need her to do special projects, some special projects, for example, would be at the end of the year, I have her run my mileage for taxes. Right. She creates a spreadsheet of all of the sessions.

I had all of the traveling. I did all of the driving. I did calculates all of the mileage organized for tax purposes, right? So that’s an example of a special project, but it’s a really low lift relationship and it has been so fine tuned. And again, I’ve, I’m onto my second one at this point. And as you can imagine, my photography business is not nearly as substantial as it was when you know, eight or 10 years ago.

Um, now the education part of my business is the most substantial, but I am still photographing four to eight clients a month. Okay. So it’s definitely still active, still getting inquiries, all of that. So it’s a really fine tuned relationship, but it’s been so nice to have somebody take the admin off of my plate, right?

Because I didn’t enjoy that part. So hiring assistant was the next thing I did. After that, the next thing I did was hire somebody to help me with editing. I hung on to editing for a really long time because I felt like it was part of the creative process for me. It was part of like my final work. Like I had to be the one doing it.

And if you love the editing part of your job. You don’t have to outsource it. I do recommend it to photographers though, because if you want bang for your buck, if you want to get the most time back, editing is where it’s going to happen. Okay. We all know that editing is a time suck, whether you like it or not.

And if you are hurting and you need hours, you need hours for your family, for yourself, for other projects. Whatever outsourcing your editing is where you’re going to get that time back the most, right? Hiring a bookkeeper is maybe an hour or two a month. Hiring an assistant is maybe a couple hours a month.

Editing though, you can easily save yourself, you know, 30 plus hours a month. Instantly by outsourcing your editing. It’s actually quite incredible. So I hired an editor and this was, I started working with the image salon. I mean, gosh, six years ago, it’s been a long time, maybe even more at this point back when they were kind of new.

Okay. So back then outsourcing your editing wasn’t nearly as easy as it is now. I mean, it was easy. Yeah. Don’t get me wrong. I worded that incorrectly. It was easy, but there weren’t as many options as they are now, right? Now there are so many private editors. There’s so many editing companies. And then there’s also all of the AI editing options.

Okay. But back then there really were like a couple of companies. And then every once in a while you’d hear about somebody who like found a friend locally and trained them to edit. Okay. So back then image lawn. Was relatively new and I heard about them through through a friend and I decided to give them a try and I was really impressed with their onboarding process, which is the same today.

Okay, their onboarding process consists of you sending them any presets that you use. And you sending them raw images and edited images and then you get on a zoom call with them and they watch you live edit and talk through a couple of images and then they switch the screen share and they try and do the same edit on your same image and you get to critique them live.

Okay. That’s the onboarding process. And I was so impressed with it. And then what happens next is you need to commit to the relationship for a little bit. Okay. You’ve probably heard me mention this on the podcast before, but you cannot expect to just outsource something and it immediately be fantastic.

That’s not going to happen. That’s not going to happen with any of the people that I’ve mentioned today so far or will mention. There is give and take. There is a learning curve to outsourcing anything with anyone, especially editing. Okay. They’re going to take a really good stab at it the first time.

Maybe it’s close. Maybe it’s terrible. Okay. The key is giving them very specific feedback so that they can make changes and try again. Okay. Anyone that you are going to outsource to on your team wants feedback because they want to do the job perfectly for you, but they can’t do that if you’re not giving them feedback.

So if you’re one of those people who’s like, Ooh, I don’t like to give people constructive criticism. I don’t like to say anything, but like, yeah, it looks good. You’re going to have to get over that. to start outsourcing successfully. So anyways, I have been with the image on for a really long time ever since I hired them.

And at this point it is a well oiled machine. I come home from a session. I do the culling. I don’t mind culling. I’m very fast at it. If you need to outsource the culling, they can do that for you too. I do the culling. I edit what’s called the anchor images, AKA my sneak peeks. I edit anywhere between 10 and 20 images from a session, depending on session length.

And then I send off the rest of the images to the image salon and they match the gallery with the anchor images that I have edited already. That way they’re matching the particular lighting or color casts that were going on at that session. Then I get the images back and I do go through them again, but it’s not more than 20 minutes.

And then I’m exporting and uploading to pick time. So, so easy. I have saved thousands and thousands and thousands of hours over the years. And I did a podcast episode way back about when I started to outsource my editing and it really gave like a more in depth. Description of the story, so to speak, and it is wild when you think about all the hours that I have gotten back because of outsourcing my editing over the years, I really think it’s why I’ve been able to grow the education and, and create all these offerings and create the podcast, right?

The outsourcing editing is. hands down will give you the most time back. Okay. So if you’re a photographer out there and you’ve not done that yet, I highly encourage it. But again, you don’t have to go with the image salon. I do love them. There are plenty of other options. Okay. There are a lot of other companies now.

There are a lot of individuals. And again, there’s the AI options as well. Just choose something. I want you to get your time back. Today’s episode is brought to you by route to rise a four month mastermind and retreat for female photographers. That is where personal development meets business growth.

During the four month experience, students have weekly calls focusing on a variety of topics that both better their lives and their businesses. Think topics like goals, boundaries, money, and marketing, and many, many others. The program also includes incredible guest teachers. A private Facebook community and weekly Voxer hours where you get individualized guidance and mentoring from me on topics that matter to you and your business.

One of the best parts of the experience is definitely the three day in person retreat. Consider this the most fun girls weekend ever. We eat well, do yoga, photograph three sessions, work through portfolio reviews, take headshots and build deep friendships. I can tell you that the women who have gone through this program have had some absolutely incredible transformations, reached massive goals and changed the trajectory of their businesses.

If you want to get on the wait list to be notified when enrollment opens again soon, you can head over to the link in the show notes and get on that list. And now back to the episode. After that, everybody else that I’ve hired is primarily related to the education part of my business. So the next person I brought on board was a VA.

Okay. That is a virtual assistant. Yes. I have a human assistant here in the Fort Worth area with me that helps me with my photography business. My VA helps me with the education side of my business. Okay. She does not live here in Texas. She is absolutely fantastic. It did take me working with a couple of VAs.

Okay. It’s testing a couple out to find the right fit for me, but have landed with one that I love. She is so efficient. She communicates so well, and she takes a lot of those smaller tasks off my plate, right? She schedules all of the Facebook content for multiple Facebook groups that I run. She schedules emails.

She helps organize course management and project management. Absolutely. So wonderful. She’s kind of like the catch all. If I don’t have a specific job that falls into one of these other outsourcing categories, it goes to her. Right. And, uh, this was an addition I made a few years ago. I had gotten to the point where I was managing again, my photography business and my growing education business.

And I was overwhelmed by wearing hats. In both sides. And I just needed somebody to help support me on the education side to take some of those like menial tasks off my plate, for example, like scheduling Facebook content. So I run a Facebook group for my membership, the round table. I also have one for every run of the route to rise mastermind.

And. Those groups are so engaged and they participate and there’s a lot of community that happens there, but it only happens because there is content posted into the group that promotes the community building. Okay, so I know that the content needs to continue to be there or the group’s going to fall off and die.

And I don’t want that to happen. I want the groups to thrive. So I need help with the content. It only is a couple of hours a month, but sitting down and writing it and scheduling it, I don’t need to be doing that. So she helps me with that, right? That’s just one of the many tasks that she does. That has been incredibly valuable.

If you are a photographer and you don’t have an education side to your business, a VA is great at either writing or helping post blog posts, doing things for Pinterest, creating graphics for you. There’s a lot of things that a VA can do for you, even if you don’t have another arm to your business, if you’re just in the photography side.

So that is definitely something to consider. I also have a podcast manager. Hi, Haley. She’s probably listening to this and editing this, but when I decided that I was going to launch this very podcast, I knew immediately that I was absolutely not going to do it by myself. I know a lot of people. I have a lot of friends that have their own podcasts, and so I know how much work it takes.

Right. So right off the bat, before I even had a name for this podcast, I had reached out to Haley and started the discussion because I wanted to start I wanted to start with her. I didn’t even want to come up with the idea by myself. I knew I wanted a podcast. I knew that I had stuff to say. Basically that was it.

So I reached out to Haley. She works with several other friends of mine that have podcast and I knew she was going to be a great fit. Honestly, I didn’t even look around because I had already decided on her. Okay. And she helped me create it. She helped to get it going. And then immediately after We had already like recorded the intro and we’ve gotten everything started.

Right. We’ve gotten the first, I want to say three episodes done. And she helped me map out content ideas and the name and create the graphics and kind of all the baseline work for it. And then she’s like, okay, so now what? And I’m like, Oh no, no, no. I just need you like monthly. Like, what does that look like?

So immediately I brought her on to my team. And she does so much keeping this podcast running. You guys, I come up with the episode ideas. I record the episode and that is all she edits them. She posts them to the blog and it’s just absolutely so valuable. If you don’t know anything about podcasting, there’s just a million moving parts.

It really is like its own business. You know, you hear about some of these people who have podcasts where like that’s their job is their podcast. And I totally get it now. A podcast is a lot of work and I am so thankful that I am not doing this by myself. So I have Haley. She’s doing my podcast management and I will forever have her.

She’s super valuable to me. Let’s see. I have also had copywriting help and web design over the years on and off. So If you have landed on my website currently, uh, in the iteration that we’re in today, and this was designed by somebody else when I previously I’m currently on show it before I was on show it, I was on a different platform and I knew I wanted to move over to show it because it’s just so much prettier.

Um, I’d heard so many great things about it and I just was overwhelmed. I don’t have time for this. I don’t have time for this and I know it’s not going to look as good. I need some support. So I hired somebody to do that for me and kind of teach me the ropes of show it when she was done. And that was incredibly valuable because not only did my website just hit the ground running and it’s beautiful and it’s functional, but I, she gave me the confidence to take it from there.

And If you’ve ever added a page to your website or updated a page to your website, it’s a lot. And if you don’t do it very often, it can feel kind of overwhelming and frustrating. But as an educator, you’re updating pages and adding pages kind of all the time based on new freebies and offers and things changing and whatnot.

And so I knew I needed to be comfortable with that. And I I’m so comfortable with show it now a couple of years later. And I’m so valuable. There are a couple of times, um, since my website launched where I have needed a project that was a little outside of my knowledge bank and kind of a little above my pay grade where I would reach back out to her.

I’m like, Hey, can you help me with this? Can you either do this for me? Can I pay you for the side project or whatever? And she’s been great. So I will link her in the show notes as well. But having somebody take over my website when I need it is just absolutely incredible. So, um, I mentioned a copywriter again, when I launched my new website, I went ahead and had a copywriter come kind of zhuzh up, uh, my copy.

I like to write, I feel like I’m pretty good at writing in my voice, uh, which is really, really important. I’m sure you’ve heard that in the copywriting world, but I wanted somebody to like really fine tune it and make sure I was getting my message across. I also needed help because I’m talking to Two separate audiences on my website.

I’m talking to photography clients. I’m also talking to education clients and that’s kind of tricky. So I hired a copywriter to help me get it off the ground. And that was super, super valuable. And kind of like my web designer, I have had one off projects here and there over time that she has helped me with.

Currently she’s helping me with some blog posts and getting those things written. She’s helped me with sales pages before. And so she kind of comes and goes and my business, but has been really, really valuable to have a professional copywriter have their eyes on my business again to make sure the messaging is getting across.

Okay, so that’s been really great. I also have somebody that helps me with SEO and She has been again, one of those on and off people inside of my business. She’s done a lot of heavy lifting for me and she’s also saved my butt many, many times. Uh, when things have just kind of gone awry unexpectedly, I understand SEO and I do a lot of it myself, but every once in a while, having a professional come in and be able to support you when you need a little extra support has been really, really great.

And luckily, just like the web designer and the copywriter, it’s a relationship I, I kind of started several years ago so that I’m able to lean on them when I need support. Okay, so those are kind of part time people that come and go on kind of project basis, right? The other people you guys, I’m not even close to done yet.

I’m not even close to done yet. The other people that I have working for me on a monthly basis. I have somebody that I hired this year that’s helping me with graphic design. So this is one of the people I mentioned back in episode 97. I had been hanging on to graphic design for kind of too long. It was time for me to give it up.

Yeah, I know Canva. I know a lot of the tips and tricks. I’m relatively fast in it. Yes, I’m capable, but like file this under I’m not nearly as good as a professional, nor nearly as fast as a professional. And also at this point in my business, I should not be the one designing things in Canva. So I had hung on to this for very, very, very long time.

And I finally gave it up this year and, Oh my gosh, literally kicking myself for not giving it up sooner. Okay. Having, uh, her support is absolutely. Life changing. There are so many things that I am designing or needing, like needing to have designed in my business on a regular basis. And I kind of had lost track of how many things there were.

And so now that I’m giving them all back to her, it’s awesome. It is so awesome. All of my carousels on Instagram that you see all those graphics she’s creating. All of my Pinterest pins, she’s creating all of the slide decks for coaching calls and conference talks she’s creating. And honestly, that is huge in and of itself.

If I was still creating all of the graphics for other things, that’d be one thing, but just giving her the slide decks is massive. Because that was such a time suck for me. Absolutely. Just crazy. Okay. So being able to give her all of those things, plus all of the worksheets and PDFs and templates and guides that are inside of my courses and my, my, um, different groups has been incredible, has been absolutely incredible.

So that’s a team member that I added and she is on a monthly retainer. And I absolutely love that addition. I also added a content strategist this year, and I’ve also talked about her before on the podcast. And I also did a recent interview with her, but, um, that is again, file that under things that I could do.

I know how to do, and I enjoy doing, but I did not need to be doing anymore. I needed to step out of that role, let somebody else take it over and do it better so that I could focus my time and energy. On growing other parts of my business, right? I am still the one that shows up on Instagram. I am still the one in your DMS.

I’m still the one on stories. I’m still the one responding to comments. I’m still the one giving her the ideas of what we’re talking about, but she’s writing everything for me. And it is so glorious to not have to use my brain power in that way anymore. And here’s what I want you to, to hear from this.

Transcribed We have a monthly meeting once a month where we talk about what’s coming up in my business, what my needs are and what I’m going to be selling or launching or pushing or whatever. And we talk through what that looks like. We talk through content ideas. We talk through hot tips and hot takes.

We talk through all of that. Okay. So. She is taking my ideas and turning them into content. That’s why it sounds like me because it’s coming from me. She sees emails that I write or things that I share on stories or things that I talk about on podcast episodes and she’s taking them and turning them into really juicy pieces of social media content for me.

Okay. So the way that she works is I just am obsessed with it because My content sounds like me because it’s coming from me, right? She’s just like stepping into my brain and pulling out things and making them just absolutely incredible. So that’s one part of it. The other part is again, she’s writing it, but I’m still creating, creating everything.

I’m creating the reels. I’m filming the B roll. I’m, you know, responding to the comments. I’m showing up, um, in stories. So I’m still doing the marketing part of content. I’m still showing up. I’m still active. I’m still connecting with my audience. She’s just doing the writing part. Okay. But it has been so wonderful for me because I didn’t realize how much brain power it was taking up to come up with all of that content.

Right. And giving it up has just been so, so, so valuable to me. Um, another person that I can’t forget to mention that is now on my team, which has been absolutely huge is I have a retreat coordinator. So if you have, ever seen me share footage of a mastermind, a retreat that I’ve hosted, then you know that I have somebody who literally supports me through every single retreat.

And this current year in 2024, we’ve hosted four retreats. Okay. That’s the most we’ve ever hosted in one year. We just wrapped up our seventh retreat, which is crazy. We already have two more on the books for 2025 and she is so invaluable to me. It is incredible. She is so invaluable to me. We have several zoom calls a year where we talk through the upcoming retreats and.

different logistics for each of the weekends, right? Different locations have different issues. Sometimes we need to find models. Sometimes we need to find locations to shoot. Sometimes we’re just looking for yoga studios or chefs or restaurants. We’re talking through when everybody’s flights are coming and going, how many rental cars we need.

There’s a lot of moving parts to hosting a beautiful, successful luxury retreat. And I absolutely could not do it without her. So we hop on several zoom calls a year. She takes care of finding all of our incredible vendors that we work with and kind of creating our schedule for the weekend and a lot of the nitty gritty logistics organizationally.

And then when we’re at the retreat, she does all of the behind the scenes so that I can focus on serving the women that are there, which is. Like mind blowing how valuable it is. She literally is making sure that we stay on schedule. She’s touching base with the vendors to make sure people are showing up on time.

She’s making sure that we leave for things when we need to leave on time. Um, she’s making sure that we are fed. Okay. She’s got snacks. She makes breakfast. She does our runs to pick up lunch for various things. She is so valuable. And then she’s also doing things like making coffee and taking the trash out.

She’s also taking all the behind the scenes photos, both on her camera and on her phone for social media. It is so incredibly valuable what she does for me. And, um, yeah, I brought her on for the very first retreat that I hosted because I knew I was going to need support, but I didn’t know, I didn’t know what was next, right?

It was the first retreat I had ever hosted and I knew I needed support. I didn’t know if I was ever going to host another one. I didn’t know if it was going to be successful or a flop. I just didn’t know. It was one big fat question mark. I just knew I needed like a wing woman. Yeah. And so I hired her for that.

And I’ve told this story before, but literally as that retreat was ending that very first retreat, as it was ending, all the women had left and a couple of close friends had stayed behind. They were kind of lingering. They were the last to leave, but My retreat coordinator was packing up to leave and I was weeping.

I was absolutely weeping telling her thank you and how much her support meant to me and how I could not have done this without her. I was just weeping and then she’s weeping and oh my gosh, one of the girls that had stayed behind actually has it on video and it’s really, really sweet. She’s become an invaluable part of my team and she’s not allowed to ever leave.

So Cheyenne, you can’t go anywhere. Okay. So my friends, those are the people that I have in my business on my team, a bookkeeper, a VA, an assistant, a podcast manager, an SEO woman, somebody that helps with web design, somebody that helps with graphic design, a content strategist, an editor, a copywriter, and a retreat coordinator.

That’s a big team that Is a big team now really quickly in my personal life. I have people that clean my house. I have people that help with yard projects. I have kids who are old enough to do chores that actually like are doing chores, right? Gone are the days where I have littles that I have to go, you know, they’re helping quote unquote vacuum or dust.

And I have to come behind them and do it right. I have kids that are old enough now to actually around the house, help unload the dishwasher, load the dishwasher, put the laundry away, fold the laundry, vacuum the floors in between cleanings and whatnot. And that is huge because I ask a lot of them, right?

I’ve got three big kids. I also have a lot of their friends coming and going. We have two dogs. We, our house gets messy fast and I don’t know about you, but I don’t do well with clutter and mess. And so I’m constantly asking them to help. I am not taking on the role of I’m the mom. I’m home all day. I should do this.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. When I’m home during the day, when they’re at school, I’m working. So I’m not doing laundry. I’m not vacuuming. I’m not dusting. I’m not doing any house management. During school hours. So when they come home from school or on the weekends, we’re all doing house management together.

We’re participating in it together. And so I’m asking for a lot of support from them. I also have an extremely supportive husband who has no problem doing laundry all day on Saturday, or, you know, he’s, you’ve probably heard me share before. He’s our food guy. He does the meal planning. He does the grocery shopping.

He makes the kids lunches and he cooks all of the meals. Okay. He’s the chef, he’s the kitchen man, and he has no problem with that because he loves it. Right. So I have a very, very supportive husband and he also helps with the kids when I need it. Right. If I have a weekend session or an evening session, or I’m traveling for a retreat or whatever, he steps up and takes over whatever needs to be done.

So I have a very supportive partner. And then I also have a several carpools because you guys know. Kids and school and sports and extracurriculars and birthday parties. It’s like never ending. And then when you multiply that by three kids, it’s just, it can make your eyes cross, right? It’s so complicated.

So I have a carpool for almost every single situation. during the school year and also during the summer. Like I am huge on making sure my kids are in camps the same weeks as their friends so that we can partner up and carpool. So I lean on my peers and they’re my kids, friends, parents for carpool a lot.

And that saves me a ton of time and effort. You are probably hearing this long, long list of support and you’re thinking, Sabrina, what the heck do you still do? What do you still do? It sounds like you give every tasks away and to be completely honest and vulnerable with you, I still have so much on my plate.

Like my days are very, very full. My list is very, very long. During any given week, I’m writing so many emails, I’m drafting podcasts, I’m recording podcasts. I’m staying active on social media. I’m still photographing sessions. I’m calling images, I’m editing sneak peeks, but the bulk of my time goes to coaching women.

I am on zoom and on Voxer a lot, like a lot, a lot. I coach women one on one. I coach women inside my mastermind and I coach women inside of my membership, the round table. And I also support women who are taking my marketing course. I support them inside of a private Instagram chat group. Okay. And again, not to mention all of the before and school before school, after school activities, going to sports, running errands for the house, all of that.

I am still so busy, even with outsourcing all of those things. It’s shocking. It is absolutely shocking. And I wish I could tell you that I’m to the point where I’ve outsourced so much that I only work like 12 hours a week, but that is not my reality. One day I will get there. It’s just, it’s not, it’s not yet.

So you could be wondering what is left for me to possibly outsource at this point. It sounds like you’ve given most of the stuff away, right? And I have, I’ve given most of the things away, but I’m pretty sure that I know what the next role is that I need to bring onto my team. And I just, I’ve been hesitant.

I’ve been hesitant and I have not pulled the trigger yet, but I think the next step for me is an OBM, which is an online business manager. This is a role that basically takes over. Most of the day to day operations and coordinates with all of the rest of the team. Okay. So what it would leave me with is the visionary ideas and the coaching.

I know this is a good step for me. I follow some OBMs online and I see what they do. And I just, I know it’s the next step, but honestly, I’m scared. So maybe you can hold me accountable on this one. Should I hire an OBM in 2025? Why don’t you send me a DM on Instagram and let me know what you think. So we are at the end of this week’s episode.

And honestly, I hope you’re encouraged. I don’t want you to do business alone. Yes, I have an extensive team. I don’t think you should go from zero to 10 people immediately, but here’s what I hope you get from this episode. Doing business alone is okay for a little bit, but you are going to reach a point where you become stuck, where you’re overwhelmed, where you want to grow, but you don’t have the time to, or see how it’s possible, and adding to your team is The answer to that problem.

That’s it for today, my friends. We’ll see you next week. Thanks so much for listening to the shoot it straight podcast. You can find all the full show notes and details from today’s episode at Sabrina Gebhardt. com backslash podcast. Come find me and connect over on the gram at Sabrina Gebhardt photography.

If you’re loving the podcast, I’d be honored if you hit that subscribe button and leave me a review until next time, my friends shoot it straight.